“There’s nothing to fear, you two. I believe this is a residual effect of the sleeping-draught.”

“What are you—ack!”

Sure enough, right as he pulled me to my feet, my knees buckled, and I slumped back to the floor. I blinked in surprise. Had all that sleep weakened me so terribly?

Meanwhile, Reggie still held me by the wrist, though he didn’t seem interested in giving it a second try. Instead, he turned back to the other two.

“See? Clearly this is another effect of the sedative, intended to keep her from escaping. There’s no way a lucid person would tumble face-first off the bed like that.”

“Wait, what? ‘Keep me from escaping’?”

I was embarrassed to learn that he’d witnessed my less-than-graceful swan dive to the floor, but more importantly, something else had caught my attention. Who was I supposed to be escaping, exactly? And what sedative was he talking about? When did I ingest such a thing? Suddenly, I found myself paranoid. Did these men do this to me?

Just then, Alan finally broke his long silence.

“Last night, we found you asleep in our carriage,” he explained.

Yes, that made sense. I could remember nodding off to sleep in there.

“So we carried you out, but you didn’t wake. Then we tried shaking you and shouting at you, both to no avail. And since you were a stowaway, we needed to take every precaution, so we examined your possessions. That’s how we came across the letter from your father... and we determined that it was laced with a sleeping agent.”

He held up the letter I had received from Lord Patriciél.

“What...? So he put a sleeping-draught... in the letter?”Was that really necessary?

“Lady Kiara Patriciél, we believe your father attempted to sedate you in order to prevent you from escaping the arranged marriage prescribed